Blas Nunez-Neto, the deputy secretary of Homeland Security, said Border Patrol had fewer than 4,000 “stops”, detentions, deportations and unauthorized crossings in the past two days.
He told reporters the figure was 10,100 crossing attempts per day in the week before the Covid health emergency-related Article 42 was lifted, which had been relied on for three years to prevent the entry of large numbers of migrants rapidly.
Section 42 has been replaced by a package of measures that includes imposing severe penalties on illegal immigrants, barring them from entering the United States, and sometimes criminal prosecution.
This has been accompanied by the expansion of formal channels for immigration to the United States, with particular emphasis on refugees and asylum seekers.
The aim was to halt pressure at the border, where more than 200,000 immigrants have been registered over the past year, causing a political crisis for President Joe Biden.
Núñez-Neto noted that last week’s immigration policy change appears to have achieved the goal of reducing illegal immigration.
The number of Mexicans trying to enter rose from 1,900 to 1,000 per day, and Colombians from 1,400 to 510.
The number of Venezuelan immigrants also fell to 50 a day from 2,400 before the policy change.
The figure of 4,000 encounters per day with immigrants that was recorded is lower than the average of 7,000 encounters in April.
Additionally, Núñez-Neto said there are signs of a slowdown in the movement of migrants north from South and Central America to the Mexico-US border.
Instead, “tens of thousands” have requested interviews with US Customs and Border Patrol, and more than 5,000 people’s cases have been “processed” since May 12, he said.
He confirmed that many Haitians, Venezuelans and Cubans benefit from a special immigration program as refugees which requires them to apply from abroad.
“I would like to re-emphasize that it is still too early to draw firm conclusions about the direction these trends will take in the days and weeks to come,” Nunez-Neto said. “We continue to monitor the situation at our borders, in Mexico and along transit routes in real time,” he added.
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